Abstract
The article contributes to the literature on the political use of hashtags. We argue that hashtag assemblages could be understood in the tradition of representing public opinion through datafication in the context of democratic politics. While traditional data-based epistemic practices like polls lead to the ‘passivation’ of citizens, in the digital constellation this tendency is currently challenged. In media like Twitter, hashtags serve as a technical operator to order the discursive fabrication of diverse publicly articulated opinions that manifest in the assemblage of tweets, algorithms and criticisms. We conceptualize such a critical public as an epistemic sensorium for dislocations based on the expression of experienced social imbalances and its political amplification. On the level of opinion formation, this constitutes a process of democratization, allowing for the expression of diverse opinions and issues even under singular hashtags. Despite this diversity, we see a strong tendency of publicly relevant actors such as news outlets to represent digital forms of opinion expression as unified movements. We argue that this tendency can partly be explained by the affordances of networked media, relating the process of objectification to the network position of the observer. We make this argument empirically plausible by applying methods of network analysis and topic modelling to a dataset of 196,987 tweets sampled via the hashtag #metwo that emerged in the German Twittersphere in the summer of 2018 and united a discourse concerned with racism and identity. In light of this data, we not only demonstrate the hashtag assemblage’s heterogeneity and potential for subaltern agency; we also make visible how hashtag assemblages as epistemic practices are inherently dynamic, distinguishing it from opinion polling through the limited observational capacities and active participation of the actors representing its claims within the hybrid media system.
Highlights
In recent years we could observe ‘discursive assemblages’ with regard to hashtags as part of the culture of discussion in social networks (Rambukkana, 2015, p. 3)
Media and Communication, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 84–95 we argue that such hashtag assemblages could be understood as an alternation of the epistemic practices of datafication in the context of democratic politics
We will first lay out how rational and scientific epistemic practices such as opinion polling emerged in democratic contexts, what problems resulted from this, and how the conditions of the digital constellation enable different formations such as hashtag assemblages
Summary
In recent years we could observe ‘discursive assemblages’ with regard to hashtags as part of the culture of discussion in social networks (Rambukkana, 2015, p. 3). Discussions about hashtags like #whyididntreport or #metoo manifest themselves mainly on the Internet, are independent of or precede street movements, and are thereby characterized by using keywords to generate publicity for specific topics. Following this understanding, Media and Communication, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 84–95 we argue that such hashtag assemblages could be understood as an alternation of the epistemic practices of datafication in the context of democratic politics. We will first lay out how rational and scientific epistemic practices such as opinion polling emerged in democratic contexts, what problems resulted from this, and how the conditions of the digital constellation enable different formations such as hashtag assemblages. Based on an empirical analysis of the case of #metwo, which dealt with racism, identity and integration in Germany, we discuss the emancipatory potential of hashtag assemblages and conclude with an evaluation of the conditions that allow hashtag assemblages to serve as a representation of public opinion
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